- Together
- Everybody
- Achieving
- More
The purpose of the activity is to build a team through teamwork. The sailboat presents a unique opportunity in the following ways:
The boat is like a business- it is designed with a specific purpose. It cannot do everything but it can perform according to its design. Businesses are like the boat-a business is designed to create a specific product or products. If you asked a clothing manufacturer to make a car, they would be unsuccessful. If you asked a sailboat to travel on dry land it would be unsuccessful, as well.
The boat's crew is like business employees in that everyone has a job and when everyone works together well and efficiently, the best possible product at the best cost is produced.
The company's product(s) are like the task the boat is asked to perform.
The best possible product with the greatest profit occurs when the company is well suited to the task asked of it with everyone working together as a team.
The sailing experience offers the unique opportunity to isolate a group of people who need to make the boat work according to its and their abilities.
Each person will be depending on his or her fellow crewmembers and the boat.
There is no opportunity for outside assistance as the boat and its crew is isolated by the sea. The conditions of weather and water are unpredictable requiring everyone to work together to perform the tasks that are demanded by the situations presented by task, boat, wind and weather.
Varying each individual's crew responsibility allows for interpersonal interactions that allow crew members to see themselves and each other in situations of varying responsibility and degrees of difficulty that are not always possible in the daily work environment hierarchy. Coworkers thus are allowed to see themselves and others in a different light than in the workplace.
The boat and its crew and tasks thus allow for the interactions of individuals to become a team through teamwork. The overall success is dependent on everyone doing their job and at times assisting with fellow crewmembers. Each crew member through trial and error and demands, both predictable and unpredictable, will find that their individual success is actually the success of the boat and is best accomplished when each member is in a position to be successful based on his or her unique skill set as well as the skill set of those surrounding him or her and the demands placed on the individual and the team by the boat and the tasks it/they are asked to perform.
